Business, Financial & Legal Posts - Page 68

One of the hottest categories in the tech world today is wearable devices. There are a number of wearables on the market ranging from smartwatches to glasses like Google Glass. With wearables set to grow significantly, a new rumor is circulating that Intel has made a big purchase to get more wearable tech in its portfolio.

Intel is rumored to have purchased a company called Basis. Basis makes wearable watches that record fitness activities for the user. Basis was rumored to have been shopping itself around with Apple and Google among the interested firms.

The purchase has reportedly been made by Intel with one source saying the deal was worth $100 million. A different source claims that Intel paid closer to $150 million for Basis. Basis currently has about 7% of the wearable fitness device market.

Today Kickstarter announced that it has surpassed over $1 billion in crowd-funding pledges since the site first launched on the 28th April of 2009. Speaking of that date, users pledged a mere $1084 to just 7 featured projects in the first 24 hours the site was live. Fast forward to March 13th, 2013, just 4 years later, and more than 54,187 backers committed to more than $4,029,585 to 1,985 projects in a single day.

To celebrate this milestone in Kickstarter's history, the company released a nifty micro-site that unveils some interesting facts about the crowd-funding websites biggest and best days as well as its most popular backers. Wednesday has been the most popular day of the week to back a project with more than $160 million pledged. Sunday seems to be the least popular day to back projects with just over $100 million pledged. $619 million of the $1 billion was pledged by returning backers, and 1,689,979 people have backed more than one project. Interestingly enough 15,932 people have backed more than 50 projects on Kickstarter.

The organization, the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) hasn't thought highly of Apple's increasing reliance on green energy, or seeing Cook hire the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, to take control of sustainability efforts for Apple. Ahead of meeting, NCPPR General Counsel, Justin Danhof said: "We object to increased government control over company products and operations, and likewise mandatory environmental standards. This is something [Apple] should be actively fighting, not preparing surrender".

Cook didn't take it nicely, reminding Danhof that even though Apple has plenty of cash reserves, it is not in the business of caving to shareholders demands, especially those driven by politics. Cook said: "We do a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive. We want to leave the world better than we found it". The Apple CEO said that anyone who finds the company's environmental dedication either ideologically or economically ill-advised, that they can "get out of the stock".

Apple held its annual meeting yesterday, where CEO Tim Cook had some interesting things to say about the company, its products, and its competitors. Investors and Silicon Valley executives are wondering if Apple is able to transform the technology world with a new device, with rivals taking big pieces of its market share away.

Cook said during Apple's annual meeting: "We're working on some things that are extensions of things you can see and some that you can't see". Cook was referring to the 32% increase in research and development spending in 2013. Cook was hit with a question regarding Apple's innovation, but said that the company preferred to not talk about products that are in development, as it didn't want to tip off the competition.

Cook said: "you an see we're getting ripped off left, right and sideways". Cook took some jabs at Google, saying that most Android users are still using older versions of Google's mobile OS, which poses a security threat. Maybe Cook forgot about the hotpot of disaster iOS has been in recently with security. He did compare it to iOS, where the Apple CEO stated that 89% of users on iOS-based devices have the most recent version of the software.

Sony has been having a fire sale of sorts lately in an effort to make up for recent financial losses, and today a new report has surfaced that says the company is in talks with an unnamed buyer with the intent of selling off its old headquarters located in Tokyo. This is the same building where Sony's founders, Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka worked on Walkman and Trinitron prototypes that made the company the electronics giant it is today.

The sell could net sony about $145 million to add to the funds it earned last year from selling buildings in New York City and Osaka Japan, but the move is not popular with Tokyo locals who think that the company should remain in its birth city. This sell off comes just after the company sold its VAIO PC business just weeks ago, and the one thing we should all take from this is that Sony is hurting and this is most likely not the last part of its business we will see sold this year.

We take a grilling seriously here in Texas. Some people prefer charcoal, some prefer gas, whatever you use you need to amok sure you have enough of it. It's easy enough to look in the bag and see if you have charcoal and shake the lighter fluid bottle. It's not so easy to tell if you have enough propane left in your tank.

That means that more than a few grillers end up running out of propane mid cookout and cursing the fact that most grills and tanks have no way to tell how much fuel is left. A new propane tank system called Refuel has turned up that will prevent you from ever running out again.

The tank system is app enabled and the app will tell you how much gas is left in the tank. The system has a waterproof scale that sits under the propane tank and sends data to the Wink mobile app. The app will tell you how full the tank is and how long you can keep cooking based on how much you used in the past.

Today Mt. Gox, a Japanese-based company, filed for bankruptcy protection and announced that it is more than $60 million in debt. Today in a Tokyo court, officials from the company said that it has lost more than 750,000 bitcoins stored in its system owned by customers and that 100,000 of its own were gone as well. At the current going rate for a single bitcoin ($574.79 via Coinbase.) the a coins lost value at almost $450 million for customers and more than half a billion dollars total.

In the last few days Bitcoin prices have fallen several percent due to the news of Mt. Gox failing. During the court appearance Mt. Gox founder Mark Karpelès said: "There was some weakness in the system, and the bitcoins have disappeared. I apologize for causing trouble." Unfortunately for thousands of customers, simple apologies will not return the millions they lost because Mt. Gox failed to acknowledge a bug in the system that had existed for years. Bankruptcy will save the company from debt, but there should be negligence charges filed in my opinion. To let a devistating software bug exist for that long while making hundreds of millions in revenue is simply unacceptable.

Netflix is one of the most popular subscription streaming services on the planet with a huge number of users. The company has a bunch of TV shows and movies from Hollywood and other places and it has original programs. Netflix's House of Cards is one of its most popular programs.

Netflix recently held its announced Netflix Hack Day. The company says that the Hack Day gives its engineers a creative outlet. Hack Day lets engineers start hacking on Thursday morning and work through the night. On Friday morning, they present their projects to their peers. Netflix says that it often sees good ideas from the Hack Day.

The Hack Day last week brought with it what Netflix calls "spectacular work." The projects this time out ranged from data visualizations, to product feature ideas. Netflix has offered up some videos looking at its favorite hacks that were presented last week.

MWC 2014 - Industry body GSMA named LG the Most Innovative Device Manufacturer of the Year at the Global Mobile Awards this week. LG has unveiled quite a few devices at this year's Mobile World Congress, which has pushed it into award territory.

LG unveiled the G Pro 2, G Flex, G2 mini, F70, F Series and L Series. LG's market share is under 5%, so it's great to see the South Korean device maker making waves in the market with various devices. Last year, LG's G2 smartphone beat Apple's iPhone to be named smartphone of 2013 by Stuff magazine. And with 2014 just beginning, and MWC closing up, the year is only starting for LG.

Vice President of LG, Chris Yie, said: "We are incredibly humbled that GSMA selected LG from among the many capable companies in the mobile industry to honour with this award. Innovation has been the key to LG's success. This recognition, in addition to last year's Best Smartphone of MWC 2013 award, is clear proof that our hard work and effort is paying off".

The best smartphone of the year award went to HTC with its One smartphone, Nokia's Lumia 520 was named Best Low-Cost Smartphone, while Apple's iPad Air took the Best Mobile Tablet award.

Fortune's latest list of the world's most admired companies sees that Apple, Amazon and Google continue to take top spots. The survey asks corporate executives to name the companies they admired the most.

Apple, Amazon and Google took out the top three spots, while Samsung, Microsoft and Facebook also found their way into the list. Apple continues to take out the number one spot, a position the company has held of seven consecutive years. Fortune does mention that investors are getting nervous waiting for the company to unveil its "next big thing".

Fortune says that Amazon has used both its "consumer-centric culture and super convenience" to "gobble up brick-and-mortar stores left and right". Fortune continues to gush over Amazon by saying that the company's "ambitions show no signs of abating: it recently jumped into the art market, and has started producing video, music, and literary content".

When it came to Google, Fortune wrote that the company "continues to find ways to make life easier (sometimes creepily so) via mind-blowing Internet products". Fortune also mentioned that Google spends considerable amounts of resources on "moonshot" projects, which has led to self-driving cars, Google Glass, and more.